What I Loved

Leo Hertzberg, an aging art historian in Manhattan, writes the story of his life with the painter Bill Wechsler, beginning the day in 1975 Leo bought one of Bill's early canvases and walked up five flights to introduce himself. The book moves across 25 years through their parallel marriages to Erica and Violet, the SoHo loft building where they raised their sons Matthew and Mark, the studio installations Bill built around hysteria and the female body, and the loss that breaks the families apart. As Mark grows into a young man Leo cannot read, the moral architecture Leo has built around art, friendship, and fatherhood begins to collapse.